Weather brings a strawberry bonanza

By UNION-TRIBUNE and ASSOCIATED PRESS
| 7:44 p.m.April 5, 2010

Some strawberries were rotting in this field in Plant City, Fla. The berry glut has made it difficult to harvest all the fruit. Growers in California and Florida are seeing prices drop.
— Associated Press

Some strawberries were rotting in this field in Plant City, Fla. The berry glut has made it difficult to harvest all the fruit. Growers in California and Florida are seeing prices drop.
/ Associated Press

It’s a good spring for strawberry lovers: Prices are unusually low in many places because cold weather delayed Florida’s harvest to coincide with California’s, and the two states are flooding the market with cheap berries.

A record number of strawberries for this time of the year were picked in the United States last week — 80 million pounds, said Gloria Chillon, director of marketing for Driscoll’s, a major berry producer and distributor based in Watsonville.

That means deeply discounted prices for San Diego grocery shoppers. At Ralphs this week, a pound of strawberries was advertised at 88 cents a pound, while Vons was selling the berries for 97 cents and Henry’s for $1.

The glut of strawberries and drop in price is driving heavier sales to area restaurants, according to local wholesaler Specialty Produce.

“When there’s an abundant supply, the chain stores will sell them at a reduced price to get them moving,” said Richard Harrington, a buyer and part owner of Specialty Produce. “The retail business can really move the product much faster than the wholesalers. But we’re selling lower, too. Our sales are up 20 percent compared to a month earlier.”

Harrington, though, was surprised to learn that grocery store prices were as low as 88 cents a pound. He’s selling a 10-pound supply for $12.90, although he’s heard of some wholesalers selling for as little as $6.

“But I don’t like to go there because somebody’s working for nothing, and we don’t want to promote that,” he said. “We want to make sure everyone can make a profit.”

Shoppers can thank the freezing weather and rain this year.

Florida is the nation’s biggest strawberry producer in January and February, while California is the largest in the spring. This year, Florida’s coldest temperatures in recent memory damaged strawberry fields and delayed harvests.

At nearly the same time, heavy rains swept across Southern California’s berry-growing regions, raising fears that their crops also could be damaged.

Prices paid to U.S. strawberry growers reached record highs, averaging $2.18 per pound in January and $1.55 per pound in February compared with 2009’s averages of $1.16 and $1.28 in those two months. But then Florida’s harvest got going in earnest.

Ted Campbell, executive director of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association, explained that farmers plant a variety of berries in hopes of harvesting on a staggered schedule.

This year, the variety matured late and mostly all at once, and by the beginning of March, “every plant was bursting loose” with berries, he said. Farmers harvested as much as they could, Campbell said, but “you couldn’t have put enough labor in the field to pick it all.”

California, meanwhile, began to see fruit on plants that had gone dormant during the rains. The plants now are producing many more berries than usual for this time of year.